


Creation was a Game of One-Upmanship

by nimblermortal



Series: Before They Were Gods [2]
Category: Norse Mythology
Genre: Creation, Gen, Loki acts bored but he's just as eager to impress as Hoenir, Loki is not a sweet boy, delusions of grandeur, grandeur, puppy!Hoenir, technically Hoenir is neither a major character nor dead, unofficial competition
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-13
Updated: 2013-04-13
Packaged: 2017-12-08 08:38:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/759358
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Odin creates mankind. Loki and Hoenir try to keep up. The poor dears want so very badly to impress him...</p>
<p>I did not catch all of the dirty jokes in this when I was writing it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Creation was a Game of One-Upmanship

They walked along many shores and met a man named Hoenir. Odin liked him because he agreed with everything Odin said. Loki said nothing to him.

“We have walked for three months and seen nothing,” Loki said to Odin. “Where is the people you spoke of?”

“People take time,” said Odin.

“Do you expect them to grow from the rocks and trees around us?” Loki demanded. Odin looked.

“From the rocks, no,” he said. “The rocks have already given birth.”

“They have?” Loki asked.

“Yes,” said Hoenir eagerly. “The flesh of Ymir rotted and grew maggots, and Odin gave them the shape of men - well, dwarves - and I gave them reason.”

“Did he,” Loki drawled, but it was hard to say who he was speaking to. He looked at Odin, who was not attending either of them.

“Not the rocks,” he said. He walked over to a tree and laid his hand against its bark, half against the vine that grew up it. “Tell me, how do you call this tree?”

“I don’t know,” said Hoenir sorrowfully.

“Ash, or Askr,” said Loki, sounding bored. “And the vine is Embla, or ambilo, a liana.”

“I see,” said Odin, and looked more deeply at the tree. “I like trees.” And he thrust his hand into the heart of the tree and began to pull. Loki gave a cry and started toward him, but checked himself. Hoenir was only watching, as though he had seen this before.

“Isn’t he amazing?” Hoenir asked.

“I hadn’t realized he was so strong,” Loki admitted after a moment. The muscles were standing out across Odin’s body as he pulled, and it was easy to see from the set of his bones that he would not be the one to give in to this contest. But his hand reached through the bark and inside the tree, and Loki could not quite tell if he had splintered the wood or if he had reached to some other inside of the tree.

“Do you know, I told him I was lonely just last night?” Hoenir asked.

“Did you,” Loki said, trying to watch more closely, for Odin’s arm had just shifted, as though something had given way.

“I did.”

“Do your dwarves not give you sufficient company? Perhaps you might try for something more worthy this time,” Loki snapped, and it shut Hoenir’s jaw, but it was too late; he had missed seeing what seidr Odin had wrought, as something pale and soft and round came out of the tree and Odin nearly fell over with the sudden give. He caught the vine with one hand as he did so, and it came loose in his hand in the same way - not, Loki thought, by accident. No, Odin had grabbed it on purpose, half smiling as he did so, as though he did not want them to see. And when he bent over his creations and breathed into one end, it was the vine that he breathed into first, the vine sticking out of his mouth like a long trumpet. Hoenir scrambled over next and laid his hand on the tender wood.

“Oh, for Ymir’s sake,” Loki said, shoving Hoenir out of the way. “Now is not the time to start with that.”

He knew that Odin said something to Hoenirr then, but he was not paying attention, because he had just seen Odin do something spectacular and he wanted to show him - yes, and Hoenir to, if he were being honest - that he could do better. He did not know how his hands moved as the seidr rose and moved inside him. It felt like a channel of fire. It felt like the shape of the burnt trees wavering by the bank. It felt like molten rock rising from its bed and climbing through the earth and into the world, spitting free into the air and flying, forcing its way through ash and cloud to hurtle where it would, to slam into the ground and shed sparks screaming away from it, cackling as they went, and it felt like the pain of that impact. It felt like the pain of the rock cooling and of it gaining shape only to be forced into the unyielding ground, it felt like the shock of a thousand faults running through a perfect body. It felt like cracking open and spreading outward, shattering like a shell and blooming upward, growing and twining and twisting, reaching for the sun, too blind to see if it had come out from the clouds but hoping, hoping, it felt like a field of wheat golden and swaying and straining to stretch and feed and nourish, it felt like every delicate line that traced a seed on that wheat, it felt like all the intricacies of lying.

Loki sat back on his heels, panting, and opened his eyes. Below him, the man and woman opened their eyes in the same way, but that was all. “There,” he said, and you could see in their eyes that they heard, though they did not understand.

“There!” said Hoenir, and he knelt beside them again, and it was less than half a second he was there, but when he stood back up the man stood with him, and looked around independent of his motion, and for a moment Loki was stabbed through with jealousy.

Then he saw Hoenir, doubled over inside and transparent now, whatever spark he had had before dead and gray and blowing away inside him, and he felt the vicious pleasure he had learned to love. He watched Hoenir, gloating, loving the way his work had destroyed him while he, Loki, was strong enough to be unchanged. He did not see the man offer his hand to the woman and help her up.

“What shall we call them?” asked Odin, as though nothing had happened.

“...call them...” said Hoenir.

“Ask,” said Loki. “And Embla.”

“No,” said Odin. “They are more than that now.”

Loki stared at him and wanted to tell him that they could do this again, a thousand times, a thousand shapes, to every thing they came across until they came back again and created new creatures from the creatures they had created, that they could spread their brilliance across the stars in a thousand thousand ways so why, _why_ should they bother to name any of them at all?

“They are man, and more than that,” said Odin. “But they do not know who they are. They are human.”

“...human...”

“Of course,” said Loki. “And their names are Ask and Embla.”

“Of course,” Odin agreed.

“Can we go on now?”

**Author's Note:**

> I'm not far enough through the Edda for this bit of myth, but Wikipedia says that Odin, Hoenir, and Lothurr made Ask and Embla together. Lothurr is sometimes identified as Loki, which is enough for me. Hoenir only ever appears again as a hostage and to grunt non-committal answers, which I decided to interpret as echoes because he put all of himself into the creation of mankind.


End file.
